Gaming & Culture —

Five things to do in the Team Fortress 2 Beta

Team Fortress 2 is a silly-looking game that has some seriously deep play. We …

While we missthe Black Box, the Orange Box is a nice value for $50. When you preorder the package, Valve is nice enough to give you instant access to the Team Fortress 2 beta. I'm not sure what's beta about the game; on my first few hours of play the game was rock-solid and the nine classes (yes, nine) all worked together well, with enthusiastic players filling the servers. If this is the beta, I can't wait for the full version.

While writing any kind of comprehensive guide for a game this large and fast-paced would take pages, I thought I'd start you off by pointing out five things you need to either do, or look for, to get you started in the game.

Find your head

When you die, and in a game that moves this quickly you'll die often, the camera shows who killed you, and you're able to take a screen shot of the moment. When you get blown up, the game is nice enough to point out what bits of you are in said picture. When you see a soldier holding a rocket launcher with an arrow marked "Your head" pointing to some smear on the ground, you know you've been owned very efficiently.

Make a Fat Daddy invincible

The Fat Daddy is my name for the lumbering ammo-piles that are the soldiers, named in honor of my good friend who is also a lumbering pile of ammo. While it's fun to take the chain gun out for a ride and cut the enemy to ribbons, if you really want to help your team, become a medic. You can shoot any other character with a gun that heals them, and this allows you to build up an "uber-charge," a power up that makes both of you invincible for a short amount of time. If you're stuck in an area where the enemy is dug in, power up a Fat Daddy, make him invincible, and then follow him in as he kills everyone with impunity, allowing your team to grab the checkpoint. Very fulfilling.

Go deep behind enemy lines

The spy is a fun class. Sure, he may not be much for firepower, but he can open his magic cigarette case and disguise himself as any class on the opposite side, slip in unnoticed, and during a big firefight turn the tide by assassinating medics or snipers. It's usually a suicide mission, once you start to shoot the enemy they'll be onto the ruse, but you'll be able to take a few with you. After you've spent some time defending a flag with your "teammates" only to have one of them shoot you in the face and take the flag, you'll know what a good spy can do.

Upgrade a sentry all the way

The engineer can create a sentry gun, and in the right place these things are lethal. If you want a little extra firepower, though, you can harvest metal from the battlefield by picking up the guns of dead soldiers, and then you clank on the sentry with your wrench. This upgrades it into a more lethal weapon, but to get that precious metal you will have to venture out to where the fighting is. It's a neat trade-off, and a fully decked-out sentry gun is quite an effective deterrent.

Always look on the bright side of life

The game's bright, cartoony graphics shouldn't fool you; this can be a brutal, bloody game. But you should be happy! Every time you die, the game tells you to look on the bright side of your death, while giving you good news about your stats. "Look on the bright side, you just dealt more damage than your previous best!" a sample message reads. "Look on the bright side, you matched the most kills with a soldier!"

You always feel like you're doing a good job, until the game ends in a stalemate and declares that "you're all losers." Team Fortress 2 giveth, and Team Fortress 2 taketh away.

The game has a great sense of humor, and is filled with little touches that give the experience a ton of personality. Each level is also designed well, with hints as to where to go or what to do splashed everywhere so you can't stay lost for long. I have to say so far the beta convinced me that I made the right decision to preorder; Team Fortress 2 is a breath of fresh air for online gaming.

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